Republican ex-Rep. Adam Kinzinger: Trump 'suffocated the soul of' the GOP

Is that your bible?

"It is a Bible."

This. People who think that the Republican party has been honorable in recent memory haven't been paying attention. There have been honorable Republicans in my lifetime like John McCain, but the party as a whole has been little more than a cabal of grifters appealing to the worst parts of us with the sole purpose of enriching themselves and punishing the "other" in sociopathic glee. Trump didn't start this. He just pulled off the mask and made it OK to speak and act openly.

This was his speech at the DNC tonight. I saw it. This was also for a republican who lost his seat due to agreeing with the Jan 6th committee that trump should be impeached and prosecuted for inciting an attempted coup. That cost him his re-election.

He may be a republican, but he's been anti-trump and has put his money where his mouth is, so to speak.

His speech was very fair and rousing. He's a good orator, and he's been criticizing trump for many years.

I have no opinion on this guy. I've never heard of him before. However, I will say that what you're describing is what I want out of an opposing party. So often the term "the other side" is thrown around, that most people forget it's supposed to be "The other side of the coin" with the coin itself being America. The other party isn't supposed to be your enemies. You're supposed to have a problem that needs solved. This group has this set of ideas to solve it, and that side has that set of ideas on how to solve it. Then the voters come along and say "Oh, l like this set." and another person will say "Well I like THAT set". Then, after the votes are tabulated, and everybody has had their say, a clear winner will come out, and that's what we'll do.

Somewhere along the way, it became more about WHO is in power, rather than WHAT they represent. Then it becomes more about playing a series of immoral games that go against the very fabric of what this country is supposed to stand for. When your play against the spirit of your country, your country becomes a different country.

So now we use things like gerrymandering, and vote manipulation, and using dead people to vote in current elections, and trying a coup against the government itself.

Is this America now?

Is this what America represents? Because if so, I'm NOT a patriot. I'm NOT proud of my country. I'm here because my family is here, and I have a stronger connection to my family than I do leaving the country. But what have we even come to in the modern day?

So for you to say that this guy represents what I've said the other side SHOULD represent, it means that maybe, just maybe, there are still some hard working, moral, honest republicans out there. I still will won't vote for them, but not because I hate them. Simply because they represent THAT set of ideals, and I want THIS set of ideals. Which is how it should be. But I don't see them as my enemy.

I don't know if there is a polite way of putting this, but 3rd parties are a bit crazy. It's not that 3rd parties are inherently bad, but we're a first past the post system. 3rd parties tend to act as spoilers to whichever party they are closer to. Until the spoiler effect is fixed, you have to be a little crazy to run as a 3rd party candidate.

And like you mentioned, ranked choice is one of the options to making 3rd parties viable. But the leadership for the democrats is luke warm on it and republicans are actively working against it. It's going to take a bipartisan grassroots effort to drag these curmudgeons into a better system.

yeah. trump definately kicked it up a notch but its been kicked up since at least reagan, maybe nixon, maybe before that.

My coworker, a Republican, will slightly-too-gleefully tell stories about how she thinks her dad was probably a klansman. She has a history degree, she says, and will swear to the end of time that the civil war was not about slavery.

I don't think she has a soul.